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Archive for the ‘Healing’ Category

Sunday afternoon, I logged onto my not quite baby shaman. She was only a couple frames from 79 and Rev had been raving about how fast Northrend levels are now. “Run two dungeons, ding” is about how he put it.

We did a couple together – Oculus, where we got in halfway and had the rest of the party die because their dragons disappeared on them. Which takes an hour. They were a bit slow…. but said their real problem had been a healer not healing them. Oh boy. I hadn’t played Anastrophe in ages. Still, I had Vuhdo all set up so random mouse clicks would do something.

I only had to heal one trash fight and a boss, then it was dragons time. Cool! I was always good at that! I was on a green and we started and I learned that…. you can’t target the other dragons through Vuhdo any more. You used to be able to. Oops. Well, everyone else (except Rev) was bad on that pull and we wiped. Came back, I activated “friendly name plates”, and targeted them manually.

Then we ran an Utgarde Pinnacle. That was fun! Only as soon as we entered the dungeon, one of the dps turned in quests, got a “20 Dungeon Quests Completed!” achievement, and dropped group, all without saying anything. Huh…

Later I queued up solo – Rev’s hunter was 80 and I had some catching up to do! I got Halls of Lightning and this happened:

And then we were off. The tank started by heading the wrong direction around the big square: I asked what his plan was and he said “lol” and headed the other way. Hmm…. good sign. And then he pulled the boss. Fully charged up. With a full trash pack. I said some special words and healed my butt off. I yelled at him. “Don’t DO that!”

“Do what?” he asked. I explained what. He then linked every vaguely cooldown like paladin ability he had and said “lol I got it.” I asked which he’d used. He said: “All of them at once, they stack.”

Every healer who reads this is now in the corner pounding their heads on a wall. I started explaining why this is a terrible, terrible strategy and he ran…. around the square more and killed packs we don’t ever have to kill. After we’d already said “run in there and past all the little guys” because it was clear he didn’t know what he was doing. I managed to get caught up to them in time to save the dps and he got a repair bill.

We kept going. I don’t think any of them knew the place, so I tossed out little pieces of advice. The dps said things like “thanks!” and “great heals!” The tank said “lol I have three paladin tanks”. I said “I have four healers” and the dps agreed that trumped him.

We keep going, he pulls all sorts of trash he doesn’t have to, nearly dies to the lightning boss because nobody listened when I said “run away all the way to here”. And then he gets to the room of trash. You remember that room. Planetarium sort of place with way too much trash way too close with way too many stuns. He says “Pull the room?” and runs in.

We wipe. I do it in a safe spot, pop, rez, and tell them how nasty this trash is, how we need to pull one group at a time. I mark a patrolling pack. He waits til they’re walking through another group and throws his shield…

The whole room is like this, two and three packs instead of one and he can’t take it. Finally he dies and we kill the trash that killed him and the whole dead/rez/heal cycle is long enough that we can get a vote to kick out. It passes.

Whew. We get a dk who does two pulls and drops. Then another paladin who does two pulls, the second being Loken, we get our points, I complete quests, ding, and am 80. Bye Northrend! The baby shaman is ready to get wet!

The old ten man raiding favorite strikes again! Maybe 25 mans have their own version but every ten man raid I’ve done, there comes a point where you start talking about two healing it. Maybe the gear has gotten so good you’re wasting heals. Maybe the dps can’t quite manage an enrage timer and it would help. Maybe someone is missing.

For the last two weeks of raid we’ve had a night where one of our healers is out and the easiest replacement is for another dps. Now, I’m taking steps to give us more options by asking one of the spriests to gear up her holy offspec – fortunately MissP already did holy pvp, and the night I asked if she’d be willing she got I think 4 tokens for her offspec or something nutso. So in the future we should have more options.

Anyway. Back to us. Two weeks ago it was Kerick out, so me and the disc priest had fun. Last week the disc priest had family issues so it was Kerick and me tag teaming. And it was fun, and easy. We’ve been two healing Ultradragon since our first kill of him, but it turns out we really don’t need three healers on any of the fights. Our folks are darn good at avoiding damage, we’ve got nice tank cooldowns and good communication on our heals team.

There’s one really big exception to all this. Spine of Deathwing is just not something we can two heal. We tried it one week. Eep. Last week we got MissP to switch and the first try was still awful, we had to go back and communicate a little better (Kerick ended up focusing on the tanks, I took the Searing Plasma people, and we had MissP aoe heal everything. Worked like a charm, even when we had to go through an extra cycle because the last plate didn’t fly off.

And we haven’t gotten Deathwing down but we’ve been two healing him for weeks trying to get a little more dps where we need it. I fully expect our first kill any time now and that we’ll be two healing it.

Does anyone have a strategy that lets you two heal Spine? I’m not going to bench any of our healers… in fact I’m going to ask that we all dps at least one fight per night, even if we’re doing 3k, so that we get some practice on our offspecs. I want us to two heal everything we can so we don’t get lazy. We’re going to hit heroics as soon as we kill this damn dragon and I want our healing muscles in good shape!

It’s just frustrating that we have such an easy time two healing the first 6 bosses and then hit this wall of “ugh” on Spine.

Most specs have a set of glpyhs that is optimal. Sometimes you chose between one or more glyphs that are ok. For Resto druids, the proper Prime glyphs are Swiftmend, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom. Glyph of Regrowth is a “gimmick” glyph. Ok every resto druid worth her salt swapped it in for Chimaeron, but mostly I’ve not seen anyone speak well of it.

What it does, is simple. If you have Regrowth active on someone, and that person’s health is below 50%, it refreshes. It keeps refreshing until they go over 50%. It actually sounds pretty good, then you start thinking…. how often are people below 50%? The other healers get them up past that, incidental heals work, how much good does this actually do? According to WowPopular.com, most resto druids don’t use this glpyh.

Actually, in progression fights? Sometimes people take damage and it just sits because the healers are trying to save the tank, or remember what else they’re doing. Sometimes I know a person is really low but I don’t have time to get him all the way up right now. Regrowth ticks are pretty small, but combine it with a Wild Growth and if the victim isn’t standing in bad any more, it can be enough to keep them going.

Regrowth isn’t a great spell to use. I’ll admit that. The heal is small and the mana cost is high. But it is fast, and if I get a Clearcasting proc better believe I’m using it. In a fight with high damage phases followed by low phases, I know that I can blow 30% of my mana on Regrowth spam and still get it back later. And that ups my throughput on the raid. If I were tank healing, the strategy would be really stupid, but usually I’m raid healing.

Just last week we were working hard on Ryolith and taking a lot of raid damage from volcanos. It was hectic as we learned the fight, and over and over I saved someone thanks to my auto-refreshing Regrowth. Cast it on them when they’re at 10% health, cast on someone else, keep going, save them all.

The glyph I gave up, Glpyh of Lifebloom, increases the crit change of Lifebloom. Which I have up all the time. So a crit chance increase is an obvious, definite HPS bump. But, if it’s not Tree Time, Lifebloom mostly stays on a tank. It’s a nice little bit of healing to help out Kerick and power my Clearcasting. But it’s not winning us the fights.

Glyph of Regrowth is unpredictable. If we do our jobs perfectly, then on most fights it doesn’t help much at all. But on progression fights where we haven’t learned not to take damage, and I am just trying to keep the raid alive another thirty seconds so we can get this phase down and have a better shot next time, it can really do wonders. It’s very much a personal play choice thing. I still might be fail for using it, but I’ve weighed my options and deliberately chosen this fail.

In Wrath: you joined a raid. There’s a paladin and a druid as heals. You know right away that the paladin is tank healing and the druid is raid healing.

Leading up to Cataclysm: a lot of talk about triage, mana management, tweaking heals… and a general sense that if the paladin wants to raid heal and the druid wants to tank heal, the system is going to support that.

Join a Firelands raid: there’s a paladin and a druid as heals. The paladin is tank healing, the druid is raid healing, and nobody really thinks twice about it.

Maybe that’s simplified but it really does seem the state of things right now. Of course, since I’m a druid healer and the always-there other member of my healer team is a paladin, maybe I’m helping perpetuate that myth. Maybe we could shake things up. But we don’t. She just doesn’t have as many AOE tools as I do. My big heals are wet noodles compared to hers, and there’s nothing I have that’s comparable to Beacon of Light (or Bacon of Light as certain of our raiders keep calling it)

I’m perfectly willing to tank heal. I had very little trouble with Baleroc as far as keeping a tank up went. I was even doing one of the Shannox tanks until our shaman pointed out that this fight was not a good one for her to be raid healing. But again, there was my perception, that shaman are better at raid healing than tank healing, that had me put her on the raid in the first place.

And priests? I have no idea how those weirdoes work at all. We’re talking about having our shaman switch to her priest and that could be…. interesting… but I have a feeling that my default configuration is going to be to keep myself on raid and Kerick on tanks, and the other healer can just fill in wherever.

But it makes sense! Wild Growth is such a cheap, easy little AOE to toss out. I’ve got enough mana that I can toss Rejuvs around like it was Wrath again. And I proc free Regrowths all the time – if the tank ain’t hurting, someone in the raid is. Depending on the fight, I can’t necessarily keep the whole raid alive but I can come close. And Kerick owns at keeping the tanks up. Sure I’ve got Lifebloom on one of them and I toss a few heals their way when I need to, but I just don’t need to.

So, is it in our class or in ourselves that these stereotypes are set? Maybe I just do better at raid healing because I’m vaguely OCD about healing bars and have to heal everyone right NOW darn it. Maybe Kerick is better at using her cooldowns to fill up a tank right before the next Decimation Blade hits, not because she has better cooldowns but because that’s what she’s practiced.

But – I don’t think that’s the whole of it. I read blogs and I never read about raid-healing paladins. Sometimes about tank healing druids, but mostly in the sense of “I can tank heal, why doesn’t my raid ever let me?” Shaman and priests don’t seem quite so stereotyped. I’m not sure why that is.

Is it really just me? Was I reading too much into things before Cataclysm? I’m not saying I’m disappointed: I’m just saying I want to make sure I’m not doing things wrong!

Going into Friday night I knew we had to hit Firelands fast and hard. We had a full raid that night – Grom was out all weekend but I’d already arranged for his spot to be covered. My tank and healer setup was all in order. And with luck we wouldn’t have lag.

We were a bit slow getting started but after just under an hour of raid time, maybe 40 minutes of actual trash clearing, we were ready to start Shannox attempts. Our first few attempts had the first dog almost dying before something happened to wipe the raid – usually Log, our Shannox tank, dropping, or someone getting stuck in a prism.

I kept an eye on the healing as we went. Kerick and I were pulling some insane numbers, some fights we were close to 14k HPS each and staying ok on mana. Jhudora, our shaman healer, was struggling to get her numbers up. I know HPS numbers aren’t very meaningful but you can tell that when the third healer’s numbers are well below the others, something’s up. I kept an eye on it and made a mental note to do some research on shaman heals later.

After an hour of attempts we were starting to look good, consistently getting the first dog down and then working on the second dog and Shannox simultaneously. We had a discussion during the raid – someone said she’d always seen the fight done by burning Shannox to almost 35% and then burning down the dog rather than splitting dps like we were doing. But it doesn’t matter whether you burn one then the other or split damage and it works better for melee if they can stay on Shannox the whole time rather than running after the dog.

We got to the point where I knew any pull could be our kill. It was closing in on two hours of attempts – three hours of raiding total. I had hoped we’d get him down a little faster but this was our first kill after all and we were still learning.

We had a good attempt going. Log kited Shannox a long way. We headed back toward the entrance – and I see a pack of scorpions come running at us. No way we can handle this in the middle of what we’re doing. They aggro on Kerick and she dies but then they reset. I’m still not quite sure what happened there, whether Addoe fake died or what, but hey, the scorpions were gone and I had a brez with Kerick’s name on it. She got up, we caught up on heals – and then somehow, the boss was dead on the ground.

I must say the kill itself was almost anticlimactic. I was almost surprised that he was dead – that happens sometimes when healing, I don’t really notice the difference between 10% and 1% until boom, the boss is dead.

We got one crafting ember and one ember for Falahla’s staff so she is officially on the way to the legendary!

After that we went and played with spiders. I have to do some thinking about the spider fight. I’m wondering if maybe I should make the paladin go upstairs to play…

Saturday we had a bunch of our regulars out, so Kerick’s friend Sorak brought a rogue over to play and we invited all our sometimes-regulars and Bocat as well. The plan was to just clear a bunch of T11. We made pretty decent time in BWD, took about two hours. One Chimaeron wipe due to a “talk to the robot not the gnome in the cage” pull accident and I think three tries to kill Nefarion.

Then off to BOT. We managed a trash wipe from face pulling, oops. And we swapped a few people in and out depending on fights. There were a couple people who wanted a Cho’gall kill on an alt rather than their main, like Reversion wanted to get it on his hunter so one of the melee agreed to bring in his tank for that fight. Jhudora wanted to kill Cho’gall on her priest but was saved to the first three on her priest. So that added a little time to our adventures. It was getting late when we got to Cho’gall and I didn’t think we’d have time to do Al’Akir. But that was ok, we were having a great time.

With all the people swapping in and out the roles got kind of confused so one of the healers asked for a role check. Naturally this was time for some of us to misbehave. I selected “Tank”, Reversion selected “Healer” and Log picked “DPS” all at once. then we had some silliness as I manually fixed the wrong roles.

When Log is right, he’s right. It doesn’t happen that often (kidding!) so let’s give him his dues.

A fun weekend of raiding. Here’s to getting another Firelands boss or two this weekend – as soon as I figure out the roster, sigh…. Sorak I want your rogue in all the time I just have to figure out how to make that happen…

Whew, long weekend over! I played lots of WoW. Since the two times we did leave the house for any length of time we went and spent lots of money, or planned on spending lots of money, that’s probably a good thing. (We’re thinking about buying a kayak. With peddles and a sail. It’s kind of more of a boat).

Anyway most of the weekend that I wasn’t raiding I played my little shaman, Anastrophe. Raid went great – we downed 10 bosses this weekend. Nobody new but it was a record number of kills in a single weekend. But this post is about the shaman.

Friday morning she was level 48 and hanging out in Searing Gorge. I blasted through a bunch of zones and got her to 58 Sunday. Did a few quests in Hellfire and started queueing for dungeons. She’s got an Ele spec for questing and a Resto for dungeons. The first time I queued, I signed up for “random Classic dungeon” and got Upper Blackrock Spire; I zoned in, planning to change specs and drink, to find my party halfway through fighting the big corehound. Ooops. And Vuhdo wasn’t updating because I was in combat and I have my other raid frames disabled (yes Reversion mocked me for that but – eh) so I hit “ctrl-v” a few times until I could see friendly unit frames, found the tank, and threw heals at him. We lived, I switched specs, we killed the final boss in there and dropped group.

That was fun.

Well I kept queuing between questing and by Monday was over 60. That’s when I started doing BC dungeons. And we all know what comes with BC dungeons… Death Knights! Woot!

They were all worgen, and about 2/3rds of them did not suck. 50% of the tank dks did not suck. There was one I tried to kick but he dc’d first. And then there was Shaaler.

I’m level 63 ish and I queue and get Underbog. Cool. I even have the quest for here. Three dks, all from the same server, two with complimentary names. No problem. The tank is very competent and the one dk is putting out great numbers, but Shaaler is…. not so good. His damage looks terrible and then – he rolls on intellect mail. Well, he rolls greed and complains that the game won’t let him roll need.

The other two dks start explaining to him, very reasonably I thought, that he doesn’t want that, and why.

This is the start of the exchange. It goes on for some time with them explaining what stats he wants, and him insisting that it’s ok that he wants intellect.

I decide to inspect him. Sure enough…

Sigh.

We get to the end of the instance. Now he’s pulling out the “I just came back to the game after two years” card. I point out that DKs didn’t use intellect two years ago either, and the tank claims to have only been playing for a month and HE knows how to gear so that’s just not a valid excuse.

We finish the run, I thank everyone and drop out. About five minutes later I decide to queue again. In the meantime I’m telling Repgrind this story.

I zone in. Slave Pens, cool! I can finish the quest to find all the missing druids. And then I notice Shaaler is back again. Ugh. And then…

Maybe I was rude but – seriously he though he was going to tank? Wearing intellect gear? This I have to see.

He runs in and kills trash. He has no idea where he’s going, so we try to guide him. We head up the ramp toward the first boss. This boss is a Bog Lord dude, and just before him there’s a pair of Bog Lord trash adds. They hit fairly hard but aren’t that big a deal, really.

The first clue I have that this is going to go badly is Shaaler putting a skull on the boss. And then he runs in. Without killing the trash first. They aggro on him and kill him in about a second.

I try to run away, die. Reincarnate too early and die again.

We run back in – by “we” I mean “me and the dps”. Shaaler doesn’t see fit to release. One of the dps starts telling him just how stupid he is. As we’re running back, I start to put a reason into the vote kick box – when he drops group.

Well that saves us the trouble. We get back and his body is still there.

We get another dk tank. This one knows what he’s doing and the instance is a breeze.

Honestly I don’t mind dks, or dk tanks, even at that level, but this guy takes the cake for me. He spends an entire run being told he’s wearing the wrong gear, that he needs to go and read up on his class, and then – he requeues as a tank. Unbelievable.

Twice in the last week I’ve run something where I was on an alt, and there was a resto druid in the group. First was a raid night where I was healing on my paladin, and the other guild brought a resto druid. And then last night I took my Spriest to ZG and the healer was a resto druid.

Both druids complained about their mana regen and their weak heals. Both specifically said “resto druids are broken” or “resto druids need X” (bigger heals, more mana regen).

Both druids were running specs with 38 or 39 points in resto, and pvp gear.

I literally facepalmed when I saw the first druid, with 39 points in resto and two in balance. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So I whispered her, mentioning that 3 points in Furor really help with mana. “I don’t usually have mana issues” is what she said. Which might be true if she doesn’t raid, but she was having mana problems that night.

The healer last night had the three points in Furor and the rest in resto. I asked her; she said she pvps in the same spec so she had taken pvp talents. But she was also wearing pvp gear. Including a Boomkin tier piece. She had one T11 resto pvp and one T11 boomkin pvp piece, so she wasn’t even getting a set bonus.

Look, seriously, it’s fine to run a suboptimal spec, if you want to pvp in your same spec. It’s fine to wear unoptimized pieces. But gosh darn it, don’t complain about the class needing something when you’re the one who is doing it wrong.

I had mana issues. I stacked spirit, and learned to use my trinkets and Innervate right, and my mana issues went away. I had issues with my heals being ineffective, so I learned how to heal with our Cataclysm toolset. I love my druid now. I can crank out meter topping numbers without going OOM. I’m a valuable part of our healing raid team. And it wasn’t that hard! I could just have googled some spec, stuck it in without even looking at it, and been doing better than those two druids.

Resto druid healing isn’t a faceroll, but we’re in a really good position right now. Viable at tank healing, still the best at raid healing, we’re an asset to any team.